Jiří Beran

“Fencing is so strong a sport that it became a lifestyle. Although I still like football, and I still play it for recreation, fencing is another matter. Our whole family except my wife are fencers. My son has long - for about eight years - been our number one, my daughter got herself all the way into the junior national team, then she had to stop because of an injury. My daughter’s husband is a fencer - a four-times national champion - and he also finished his career not long ago. The whole family fences, and we talk about it and even life in similar ways. I’ll give an example. When my daughter was getting married six years ago, she was marrying a fencer, and we couldn’t find a date for the wedding because of various international tournaments. And because they wanted it to be in spring, we found one date. We had to reschedule the tournament in Liberec because the wedding was attended by fencers from all over the country. So it was one big fencers’ wedding. It’s something that I very dearly love to do.”

“We - because we did the sport - we had one huge advantage. During a season we would have some three world cups abroad, in the West. So we could go to Bern, say, in Switzerland, where the Heidemheim was held regularly every year. They have traditional tournaments there that continue to this day, and were back then as well. So that was something of a festive occasion. When you got past those borders and saw how things were at some tournament - especially in Switzerland - you wondered how it was even possible? They don’t work any longer, they’re not more clever, yet somehow everything works there... Whereas when you came back home, you had to wait queues for almost everything. My wife always said, what’s the matter with you? I was always depressed by it for a week or so. I just couldn’t figure it out, why it was like that. If you didn’t get outside, you stayed hidden in the pot and you didn’t realise it. But as soon as you got out and you saw the contrast when you returned, it was always a bit more complicated. It gave you a different perspective when you could compare with how it was outside.”